The Intelligent Investor
| Benjamin Graham The Intelligent Investor, revised ed. commentary by Jason Zweig, 2006 (1972) |
Read it three times before you put any money in the stock market, the broker who taught a course I took told us, and it’s excellent advice. I do love this book. It is one of the classics on investing and provides a sound intellectual AND practical investing framework with lucid writing. Moreover, It’s not often that you find someone with extraordinary intellectual powers and profound common sense and vast experience and a steady hand, and Ben Graham is a gem. So please go read it.
Intelligent investing is more about temperament than IQ scores; it means being patient, disciplined and eager to learn, being able to harness your emotions and think for yourself. Graham describes this as “a trait more of the character than of the brain”.
Underpinning this so-called investors’ character is the solid intellectual foundation. Graham, who taught at Columbia, is the father of value investment and modern security analysis, with his 1934 book, Security Analysis, considered a bible for serious investors. (Value investment means buying a stock, or a business, at less than its intrinsic value – it has been modified and enhanced by successful investors such as Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch.)
Getting a grip on what he talks about is like talking to a trusted adviser, it teaches you fundamentals, basics, the important things, it tells you how to look at shares not just as things with prices that wiggle up and down.
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